“Yet Here I Am: Lessons from a Black Man’s Search for Home” by Jonathan Capehart
c.2025
Grand Central
$30.00
272 pages
One hand over the other.
That’s how you climbed to where you are now. One rung at a time, hand over hand, until you reach the intended goal. Yes, sometimes you went backward before ascending or had to move sideways past a barrier. And sometimes, as in the new memoir, “Yet Here I Am” by Jonathan Capehart, you get a hand up.
His mother refused to talk about it.
When little Jonathan Capehart inquired about his father, who died just months after Capehart was born, he was met with a look that told him not to ask again. He didn’t learn the truth until he was well out of childhood: his father had left Capehart’s mother long before Capehart’s birth, and though the man visited afterward, “he didn’t stay long….”
The loss stung, but things turned out well anyway. Capehart had many father figures throughout his life, paternal relatives who kept him in the family loop, and his maternal grandpa, who played a big part of his upbringing. Young Capehart spent his summers in Severn, North Carolina, playing, visiting, and gathering lessons and wisdom from his mother’s parents and aunts. In Severn, extended family was everywhere, where many of Capehart’s best childhood memories sprang.
He also has many cherished memories of his mother and books. He was always a reader, and schoolmates recognized it. They also “knew I was a little ‘funny’,” he muses, because, at ten years old, he knew he was gay. His mother had had to teach him the hard truths about “how to be Black in white spaces,“ but college friends gave him safety for “self-discovery.”
Also, at the tender age of 10, Capehart became fascinated with electronic media and decided that he wanted to work at NBC. He later interned at the Today show for two summers. At 19, he met a mentor who demanded excellence and shaped Capehart’s career.
Twelve years later, that same mentor offered Capehart his own MSNBC show…
“Yet Here I Am“ is a solid okay as memoirs go.
It’s not earth-shattering, nor is it wildly fascinating. It’s not exciting, heart-wrenching, or even emotional, but it’s not terrible. Overall, it’s smack-center, a “5“ on a one-to-ten scale, and there we are.
Moving from his middle-class childhood in which he vaguely understood the racism present in his mother’s hometown, to a wildly successful career in media and the mentors who helped him get where he is, author Jonathan Capehart shares his story with a casual tone that’s calm and matter-of-fact. Readers get a nice look at the workings of journalism and what it’s like to win a Pulitzer Prize, but if you’re expecting the kind of excitement you want in a deadline-racing newsroom, it’s not here; instead, Capehart writes in a decidedly unruffled manner that’s pretty tame.
Still, Capehart fans will want to read this memoir for its thoughtfulness and satisfactory ending. If you’re not a fan, “Yet Here I Am“ could be a long climb.
